Dance of Bone and Blood
by HeyYouLookHere
Summary: And it all started with a cup of tea.
1. Chapter 1

-I don't own Naruto.  
-I'm very aware that I'm not a good writer. This is just for fun (and to relieve my over-obsession with Kimimaro).  
-This is obviously an AU story. Somewhere else in the Naruto-verse, Kimimaro was somehow cured of his mysterious disease (but was still after Oro used that random guy as a vessel and now Sasuke is to be his next desired body, so Kimimaro is not gonna be used by Oro as his next vessel anytime soon).  
-The setting is about a year or so after Kimimaro was first introduced, so he is around 16.  
-Sorry if this story is cliché.

* * *

Wind rustled the leaves of the trees Kimimaro was navigating through. He was heading back to Orochimaru's hideout, but there was still a long way to go that would take at least the rest of the day to travel, and it was only noon.

Kimimaro licked his dried lips. He was terribly thirsty. His leather water pouch betrayed no signs of liquid. Even the deadliest beings can't battle dehydration. Knowing that there were no open sources of water nearby, he veered off to a nearby village.

_A cup of hot tea would sure be nice_, he thought silently as he advanced towards his destination.

A quick glance told Kimimaro that this community was not the wealthiest. Caved-in roofs and dangerously hanging doors greeted his sight as he walked into the mess of a village. However, the bad aura it gave off did nothing to deter him from finding something to quench his dry mouth.

Wary glares came from the few citizens that were walking on the streets. It wasn't a surprise that such a worn-down village was so empty. There was not a smile apparent on anyone's face. It was almost like being miserable was a contagious disease that affected both the buildings and people.

After turning a corner of a block of molding cottages, Kimimaro was presented with exactly what he had wished for earlier—a tea house. There was an unpleasantly large hole in one of the walls, but other than that mishap there were no other significant details of damage on the place.

Kimimaro was welcomed by a young brunette girl as he walked through the entrance. From the nervous laugh that escaped her throat to her hands busily playing with each other, she was no doubt an awkward ball of nerves that can't contain themselves.

"W-welcome to Kyo's Tea Shop! My name is Ryuna, and I will be your waitress for today! You can sit anywhere you'd like! B-but please not the table by that window over there—the chair is on the verge of collapsing onto itself. We're not r-responsible for any injuries here; we only serve tea! I'll be right with you in a moment." The girl closed her rather wordy welcome with a wobbly smile and disappeared into the kitchen.

While wondering to himself why anyone would ever employ a waiter like her, Kimimaro took a seat near the entrance. There weren't any other customers inside the tea house, which wasn't a surprise for the measly handful of people in the village.

A few seconds passed and Ryuna quickly hurried back to take his order, but not without tripping over a chair leg and nearly taking a face-plant on the floor. It was almost a wonder how she managed to grab onto a table edge to break her fall. She was thankfully less hasty in her steps the rest of the way.

Putting on a less fearful face that almost had a date with the floor a few moments ago, Ryuna brushed a lock of brown hair away from her face and asked, "M-may I take you order? We serve most types of tea here," her eyes shifted in every direction. "Th-the chamomile is great! The oolong is quite popular as well… Jasmine isn't half as bad eith—"

"Plain green tea would be good, thank you." Kimimaro calmly interrupted her blabbering.

The waitress's cheeks grew red as she apologized, "S-sorry! I'm not very good at keeping my mouth shut around strangers," her hands flew towards her mouth as she continued, "N-not that you're strange or anything! I meant stranger as in someone who—"

This time it wasn't Kimimaro, but the tea house owner who interrupted her with a loud "OYE! Stop toying with the customer and take his order already!"

Ryuna squeezed her grey eyes shut and drew a deep, shaky breath. When she opened her eyes again, they lacked the upbeat spark from only a few seconds ago. Slowly, she said, "Is that all? If it is, then your _plain _green tea will be ready in about 5 minutes." She emphasized _plain _if to mock.

Surprised by her sudden change, Kimimaro gave a slight nod. Ryuna walked back to the kitchen with confident strides, as if the clumsiness displayed earlier were nothing but an act, although she still had an uneasy imbalanced atmosphere about her.

Kimimaro's eyebrows knit together closer as he wondered, _Does she have a split personality?_

The brunette returned 5 minutes later, as promised, with a steaming teapot and an empty teacup on a round dish. The cooler side of her that surfaced earlier, however, was seemingly gone.

The dish chattered slightly against the contents it held from Ryuna's trembling hands as she slowly navigated a path to Kimimaro's table, careful not to serve the tea to the floor instead of the customer.

Ryuna breathed a sigh of relief as the tea made it to the table without harm. She gave Kimimaro an apologetic smile as she started pouring his tea and quickly stuttered, "S-sorry about that earlier. There's another me that sometimes take over. I don't like her at all, but I can't control her very well… I managed to stuff her back in to her cage before coming to serve your tea, b-because I know that she can be so rude sometimes, although she does a much better job at everything than I do. By the way, which version of 'me' do you like better? Me or h—"

Ryuna's drabbling was silenced for the third time by a quick clear of Kimimaro's throat. She looked down at the table and realized where she was pouring the tea. Instead of the cup (which would have overflowed already by now anyway), the stream of hot fluid somehow shifted away from it and was making contact with the bare table. Not only that, but the puddle of steaming tea was dangerously spilling over the tabletop like a miniature waterfall and taking nest into Kimimaro's lap.

A long, high-pitched gasp came from Ryuna as she realized the mess she had made. She quickly set down the teapot and reached for a towel from the inside of her kimono.

"I-I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!" came her frantic apology.

Ryuna forgot how close she was to the table but attempted to bow. Her quick unplanned action, however, caused her forehead to take a beating against the table edge.

"Wahhh… that hurts," Ryuna rubbed her sore forehead. "N-nevermind me. A-are you hurt? This is the worst mess-up I've done so far… Kyo (the shop owner) is surely going to kill me this time. Let me hel—"

Her advance with the towel towards Kimimaro's lap was quickly cut short from his fast grab of her wrist. "I'm alright. A towel won't do much help, anyway."

Ryuna flinched and replied, "A-ah! I see. S-sorry. I'll get this cleaned up right away."

Kimimaro released his tight grip from Ryuna. She rubbed the spot on her wrist where his painful lock had been.

_What strength…_ she thought to herself. _He does look like serious business though. I wonder how I'm not dead already. I'm lucky that he's such a collected individual. He barely even reacted to the tea that spilled on him._

Ryuna hurriedly cleaned up the table with the towel and reached for the teapot again.

"I'll do that, thank you." Kimimaro stopped her just in case she isn't careful again.

Ryuna's face grew hot as she silently agreed.

_What a strange person…_ Kimimaro wondered to himself. Ryuna's performance had amazed him—to say the least.

Finishing up what was left of his tea from the accident, Kimimaro got up to leave. Just before exiting, however, he heard an angry voice coming from the kitchen. Slightly curious, he moved closer to the commotion to investigate further.

"…what you've done…despicable…can't believe I felt sorry for you…shouldn't have hired you…all you bring…shame to my shop…" slips of the one-sided conversation that had escaped the muffling of the wall separating the kitchen from the outside reached Kimimaro's ears.

Not wanting to eavesdrop any further, he turned to leave. However, a sudden smack that was no doubt from the forceful contact of a hand against skin made Kimimaro pause yet again.

And then came a heavy thud and soon a crash of unmistakable glass. This was enough to make Kimimaro break through the door to the kitchen.

Kimimaro's eyes met a very shocked and frozen middle aged man, who was presumably the shop owner, Kyo. In front of him lied Ryuna's unmoving body and pieces of shattered glass and tea leaves.

"What happened here?" Kimimaro's voice broke Kyo's trance with a start.

"Wh-who are you?" the man looked frantic as he desperately tried to explain, "I-I only slapped her out of my own fury, but I didn't expect her to collapse against the tea shelf. I-it was an accident!"

Kyo was backing away from the scene uncontrollably. With a terrified yell, he ran towards the back exit of the shop.

"Coward," remarked Kimimaro.

Turning towards the body on the floor, he examined the details of the accident. He quickly came to a conclusion: Ryuna was knocked against the shelf with glass jars of different tea ingredients. One of the containers slipped off the shelf from the force and shattered against her head.

Kimimaro bent down for a closer look at Ryuna's wound. It seemed quite deep—blood was escaping at a quick and steady pace.

"Are you alive?"

When he got no answer, Kimimaro got up to leave. A sudden thought made him stop.

_She caused this upon herself… but why do I feel like I'm ultimately the one to be blamed?_

Kimimaro disliked causing violence to things he weren't ordered to exterminate. With battling thoughts, he hauled Ryuna into his sturdy arms. She was alarmingly light, like she haven't had a proper meal in years. Kimimaro related this discovery to her over-clumsiness.

"Let me go."

Kimimaro was almost startled by the sudden voice from the body that anyone would have recognized as half-dead.

"So you weren't dead after all," Kimimaro commented with a smirk.

"Let me warn you: I'm not as weak as my other half, but I'm still trapped in her improperly fed body so I can hardly do anything. I can fix this one on my own."

Kimimaro watched in astonishment as the blood that was flowing from Ryuna's wound just a second ago abruptly took an unnatural form as it started to become forced back inside. But it only continued for a few lasting moments before her control on the blood faltered and stopped altogether.

"Damn it! This bitch really didn't take care of herself at all. Why can't she just let me take over…"

Ryuna's voice faded away as her body went limp once again.

_A kekkei genkai? No, it can't be,_ Kimimaro thought, _But then again, look at yourself._

Ryuna's work seemed to slow down the bleeding, but the loss of blood and her already weak body didn't allow her to hang in there long enough to fully fix the wound.

Sighing, Kimimaro carried Ryuna out of the tea house and started to search for a place with medical assistance.

_Sorry Orochimaru, but you'll just have to wait for me a bit longer._

* * *

-By "young girl" I didn't mean _that_ young. Kimimaro might be a bit gay, but he's no pedophile. Ryuna (sorry I'm not good at giving names either .-.) is about 2 years younger than him.  
-I'll try to keep Kimimaro in character as much as possible, but it might be hard sometimes for such an emotionless brick like him.  
-I tend to rush a lot, so I'll try my best to keep chapters (if I even continue this) not too short.


	2. Chapter 2

Ryuna's eyes opened to a dark and cracked ceiling. She looked down and saw that she was tucked tightly into a tiny bed with a smelly sheet. A blanket of stars against a night sky greeted her view as she looked to the broken window next to her. Ryuna turned her head the other way to take in the setting and spied another person in the room. She groaned as she rubbed her sore and blurry eyes.

"Did you have a nice nap?"

"Who… are you?" Ryuna's eyes struggled to adjust to the dim lighting.

"Kimimaro. I am the reason that you didn't bleed to your death earlier."

Ryuna blinked several times in an attempt to see who was talking to her. Her eyes widened as they finally made out the figure on the other side of the room.

"I-it's you!" Ryuna gasped, "From the tea house!"

"Good to see that your damaged head didn't mess with your memories."

"Damaged… head? How dare you call me that! Y-your head is the one that's damaged!" Ryuna was still not aware of her situation and fixed Kimimaro with an angry stare.

"Take a good look at it and see for yourself," Kimimaro moved towards the bed and threw her a mirror from the bedside table.

Ryuna carefully held up the dangerously jagged bare piece of reflecting glass. The sight of her bandaged head triggered her realization of what had happened before her consciousness was cut short. This caused her to grab the mirror tighter until blood was poked from her fingers.

"I… I was being lectured by Kyo like always… I was expecting the usual slap, but what I wasn't expecting was the falling. Maybe he hit me too harshly this time, or was it because body finally got the best of me?"

At this point Ryuna's hand holding the mirror was beginning to shake as blood leaked from where her fingers were being pricked by the sharp glass. Kimimaro saw this and took away the mirror before she could do even more damage.

"Don't worry about me," Ryuna said, "I'm already thankful to you for saving my life."

She looked back to her hand as the blood took the same strange, unnatural form from earlier and was being coaxed back into where her fingers where cut. The injuries were then sealed completely, as if the bleeding from a moment ago was just an illusion.

"It's disgusting, isn't it?" Ryuna pondered with a sad smile, "Everyone thinks it is."

Kimimaro did not reply to this.

"Anyway, I can't recall much of what happened after I fell. I just remember this very loud shattering noise before I fainted," Ryuna looked at Kimimaro and said, "Sorry, but do you mind giving me a recap of what I missed when I was out cold?"

Kimimaro quickly ran down the events after Ryuna lost consciousness, including the reappearance of her split personality.

"So you've already seen my ability to manipulate my own blood," Ryuna said, "No wonder you didn't react at all when I healed the cuts on my hand unlike everyone else, although I didn't really expect you to, anyway."

Kimimaro just looked at her.

"Stop giving that silent _I'm-cooler-than-you-and-I-know-it _look! I-it's creepy," Ryuna commented, "Besides, aren't you supposed to be somewhere else by now? You don't look like you're from here or someone who would stick around a random village too much."

"That is not of your concern."

"Then why did you take the time to save me? You don't look like you're the kind to go out of their way to help others."

"That is true, but I do not like it when I hurt someone that I was not ordered to."

"My accident had nothing to do with you! It was my own fault that I got hurt," Ryuna could not understand the man standing next to her one bit.

"I had the power to stop you before you spilled that tea everywhere, but I didn't."

"I would have gotten lectured just the same either way! Even if I didn't collapse on that shelf today, I'd get into some kind of serious accident eventually. B-but thank you for taking care of me," Ryuna blushed, "I really appreciate it."

"Thank your village's infirmary, not me," Kimimaro explained, "I just brought you here."

"A h-hospital?! But isn't that really expensive? I don't have that kind of money to pay you back!" Ryuna looked like she was about to cry.

"Don't worry about it; I've got it covered."

"A-are you sure? I'm willing to work twice as hard to pay you back, although I rarely am accepted a—" Ryuna broke off in the middle of her sentence as she suddenly grabbed her forehead with both hands and made a choking sound halfway between a scream and a growl.

"Are you alright?" Without moving, Kimimaro looked at her with an emotionless stare that an observer would have mistaken as concern.

"Sh-she's c-coming back… I-I don't want her… to t-take over" Ryuna's back arched off the bed as she struggled to keep her other personality at bay.

Kimimaro was just about to step in when her agonizing battle abruptly ceased.

With her hands still covering her forehead and eyes, Ryuna's face slowly upturned into a sly grin.

She rose up to a sitting position and twisted to face Kimimaro.

"Oh," she said in a flat tone, "It's you again."

"You could at least show a little bit of gratitude to your savior."

"I really could care less. I've told you before and I'll tell you again; I'm not as weak as the brat that tries so hard to keep me suffocated inside her," Ryuna fixed Kimimaro with a death glare, "Don't play with me as you do with her, or you might just regret it."

"Now don't get too testy," Kimimaro returned her glare, "At least your twin doesn't have a rotten temper like yours."

Faster than Kimimaro would never have predicted from her, Ryuna was right beside him in a split second. The bed sheets hardly rustled in her abandonment of them. Not only that, but she had a thin and sharp blade transformed from her blood pressed against his neck.

"I won't allow you to talk of me like that," Ryuna said through gritted teeth, "She is not my twin and never will be. Don't you ever dare underestimate _me_."

"I never said I underestimated you," Kimimaro replied with a smirk, even though he was indeed surprised by her ability.

"Good, now get me out of—" a soft gasp severed her voice as Ryuna suddenly dropped the blood-dagger began to fall forward.

Kimimaro extended an arm and caught her before she could reach the floor.

"P-pervert…" Ryuna spluttered, "Don't touch me…"

Kimimaro granted her wish and let her crumble to the cracked tiles on the floor.

"Why does she... fight me so hard…" Ryuna's voice came out in heavy rasps, "Can't she tell that I'm… trying to protect her…"

The blade on the floor shifted into several abnormal streams of blood as it was summoned back into the palm of her hand.

Seeing that Ryuna has complete passed out, Kimimaro picked her up and laid her back on the bed.

Kimimaro stood and stared at Ryuna's sleeping form while his mind began to speculate the cause behind her identity disorder. He remembered a conversation Kabuto once had with his still bed-ridden body one day while doing some checkups on him.

...

"_How is Lord Orochimaru?" Kimimaro managed to whisper._

"_He's doing fine," Kabuto replied, "You need to stop worrying over him; you know that I'm always watching over his back."_

"_Sorry."_

"_No need to apologize," Kabuto said with a smile, "With my help, he swiftly took over another village today, although this one was slightly more difficult to defeat than usual."_

"_How so?"_

"_There was a rather strong female jutsu user that surprised us. She first showed a weak personality that obeyed all of our orders, but we were suddenly attacked when we turned our backs on her," Kabuto explained, "It was almost as if she became a different person, but it was probably just an act, since identity disorders are quite rare."_

"_Identity disorder?"_

"_It usually affects those who have suffered great amounts of trauma during their childhood," Kabuto pushed up his glasses, "These 'separate identities' sometimes surface without the host's own will, as they had helped the individual cope with harsh times and painful memories and are a part of the host as a result."_

"_What happens to the host during a personality change?"_

"_The host's body is taken over by a very different personality for a certain amount of time," Kabuto replied, "But when the host's normal state returns, they remember little to no details of what had occurred during one of their alternate egos."_

_..._

A cough forced Kimimaro's attention back to the present.

"What… what happened?" Ryuna struggled to sit up.

"Your alternate personality took over again," Kimimaro explained.

"Oh no!" Ryuna gasped, "What did she do this time?"

"She threatened me with a blade made by your blood."

"I-I'm sorry! She gets offended easily and always relies on violence to solve her problems. Did you get hurt?" Ryuna apologized, "Unfortunately, she's the one who emerges the most"

"Are you saying that there are others?" Kimimaro looked slightly curious.

"Oops, I didn't mean to say that," Ryuna covered her mouth with her hand, "But yes, that is the truth. I refrain from telling others because I'm afraid of being thought as even more of a freak than I already am. There are two other versions of me besides the violent one, but they rarely ever show up anymore. Also, none of my different personalities know about each other; they only know that they exist inside the 'real' me."

"I see," Kimimaro said, "Also, if you don't mind me asking, what led up to your multiple personalities?"

"I…" Ryuna looked away, "I really don't want to talk about that, sorry."

"Sorry for asking."

"P-please don't apologize; it's my fault," Ryuna said without facing him.

"You should continue resting while you can," Kimimaro commented, "The medics only allowed you to stay until sunrise."

"Where will you be?"

"I am to continue back to where I was heading towards before stopping at this village," Kimimaro turned towards the door to leave.

"W-wait! Kimimaro, that's your name, right? I want to thank you for all you've done for me today," Ryuna said sincerely, "A-also, no one has ever accepted me like you did, so thank you as well for not running away from me like everyone else does."

Kimimaro paused to hear this, but did not say anything in acknowledgement.

"Good bye," Ryuna knew that any efforts to make him say something heartfelt would be fruitless.

Just as she had guessed, Kimimaro disappeared behind the door without another word.

Smiling herself to sleep, Ryuna hoped that they would meet again someday.

* * *

-I did do some research on DID (dissociative identity disorder) and will try to keep Ryuna's case as realistic as possible, but since it's fanfiction of an unrealistic show, of course it won't be 100%. I do what I feel like will benefit this story.  
-Sorry it's boring and rushed at parts. (And it probably will be the entire time. I'm not a good writer.)  
-Ryuna's backstory will be revealed in time. (And it's quite sad if I do say so myself.)


End file.
